Street Shooting Here And There

Drug of Choice?

It use to be the one below.

Pretty simple to use. Open the bottle and keep the glass full. The addiction for some never came but, for others 1 drink became too many and 20 wasn’t enough. For those folks the only real cure was total abstinence. Very hard to achieve but the choice was pretty clear. Do it or die.

Many abstained… A higher percentage of the addicted didn’t stop.

They died.

Now things are different. Much more complicated.

Our modern drug is more sneaky. It doesn’t come with a warning label. Pregnant women and young children use it all the time. It can be very useful and wonderfully entertaining. Total abstinence is almost impossible.

But the price for becoming addicted is crippling personal isolation in a digital world teaming with digital avatars masquerading as real flesh and blood. We “friend” ,”link”,”tweet” and “post” (as I’m doing now) in an amorphous electronic universe populated by those who interact by tapping symbols on plastic or glass.

We’d do better sitting together on a couch eating popcorn and arguing about California Chrome’s chances for the triple crown.

Or even, yes ignore what I said above, some bar stools cheering for the Red Sox.